Book Review: Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

After reading Robopocalypse - a hyper-realistic story of a robot uprising - I'm now keeping a very wary eye on my new computerized toaster...

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about… after reading Robopocalypse – a hyper-realistic story of a robot uprising – I’m now keeping a very wary eye on my new computerized toaster…

I’m sure you remember the film The Terminator, which involved a cyborg assassin sent back in time from the year 2029 to 1984 to kill a lady called Sarah Connor. The underlying story was that, in the not-so-distant future, an artificial intelligence network called Skynet becomes self-aware and initiates a nuclear holocaust of mankind. Sarah's yet-unborn son John will rally the survivors and lead a resistance movement against Skynet and its army of machines. With the Resistance on the verge of victory, Skynet has sent a robot called a Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to kill Sarah before John can be born, as a last-ditch effort to avert the formation of the Resistance.

As an aside, when I first saw The Terminator it made me want to learn how to ride a motorcycle. Not that I want to actually own a motorcycle, you understand, but it struck me that if I were to be running down a street being chased by a homicidal robot and I came across a really powerful motorcycle with the keys in the ignition … I would have to keep on running because I don’t know how to ride one. Reading Robopocalypse has brought “Learning to ride a motorcycle” right back to the top of my personal “To Do” list.

As another aside, The Terminator was released in 1984, which is 28 years ago as I pen these words (where does the time go?). Did you know that it helped launch the film careers of James Cameron (who directed it) and Arnold Schwarzenegger? And did you also know that it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"?

But we digress… the thing is that (putting the time-travelling aspects of The Terminator aside) when this film came out, as far as most people were concerned the thought of our creating a self-aware artificial intelligence like Skynet was… well, firmly in the realms of science fiction, shall we say.

Now, after reading Robopocalypse, I’m not so sure. This book really is more than a little scary, if the truth be told. The author, Daniel H. Wilson, earned a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, and he’s made quite a name for himself with a number of books such as A Boy and His Bot (for younger readers) and How to Survive a Robot Uprising (which I just added to my “Wish List” on Amazon.com).

Robopocalypse actually begins 20 minutes after the end of the war, when a team of humans discover a cybernetic data storage device that contains a documentary-type record of the war from the robots’ point of view.

There are many really good things about this book, not the least that the author really knows what he’s talking about and the dozens of unique robots that spy, stalk, and fight through the Robopocalypse are grounded in existing robotic research. Also, the human characters in the book are very well observed, which makes you really identify with them and think to yourself “What would I do in that situation?” (In my case, the answer may well be to scream like a schoolgirl – not that this would help, but it would make me feel better.) In many ways Robopocalypse is reminiscent of the sort of books Michael Crichton used to write, like the Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man, which means the reader is in for a gripping time (both of these books have "aged", but they were "state-of-the-art" at the time and they are still well worth reading).

As yet another aside, Daniel (the author of Robopocalypse) really reminds me of the tall, thin, gawky super-genius theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper in the American sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Jim Parsons as Dr. Sheldon Cooper

Daniel Wilson as himself

So, just how far-fetched is the Robopocalypse scenario? Well, it all depends on who you talk to. In his book The Singularity is Near, futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that we will achieve the equivalent of a single human-level artificial intelligence by around 2020; also that by around 2045 the sum total of robotic intelligence will exceed that of the combined intelligence of every human on the planet (estimated to be close to 9 billion by around 2045).

But will these artificial intelligences be self-aware to the level that they might decide humans are a threat and determine to remove us from the picture? In his Skeptic column in the January 2012 issue of Scientific American, Michael Shermer’s prediction for the Singularity is that “We are 10 years away… and always will be.” Of course Michael is skeptical about everything (grin).

Just the other day, literally hours after I’d finished reading Robopocalypse, I turned on the television and found myself watching one of those “10 Ways the World Might End” type programs on the Discovery Channel. You can only imagine my surprise to discover that our being wiped out by self-aware artificial intelligences was rated about number six on the list…

I believe that Robopocalypse is already being made into a Steven Spielberg film slated for 2013 release. I for one will be there for the opening. I will also be keeping a watchful eye on robotic developments, and I think it’s safe to say that we will not be having any robot assistants in our house, let me tell you! In the meantime, I intend to read Daniel’s How to Survive a Robot Uprising, which the blurb on Amazon describes as follows:

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and then deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous “smart” house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the keys to quashing a robot mutiny.

From treating laser wounds to fooling face and speech recognition, besting robot logic to engaging in hand-to-pincer combat, How to Survive a Robot Uprising covers every possible doomsday scenario facing the newest endangered species: humans. And with its thorough overview of current robot prototypes—including giant walkers, insect, gecko, and snake robots—How to Survive a Robot Uprising is also a witty yet legitimate introduction to contemporary robotics. Full of cool illustrations, and referencing some of the most famous robots in pop-culture, How to Survive a Robot Uprising is a one-of-a-kind book that is sure to be a hit with all ages.

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Check out this video of a Japanese Female Android Mannequin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR0GhdioJKs and also this video of a Shape-Shifting Robot Mannequin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF1qgqDaAt4

Actually the solution to controlling the robots is easy. You put a republican algorithm controlling the right side of the robot and a democratic algorithm controlling the left side --both of which can be turned on simultaneously by remote control. Very quickly you will discover the robot is useless.

imho, what most fail to consider, is the trade-off between freedom and control. Ultimate freedom comes from 0 government, and no systems. Besides laws and cultural restrictions, we are increasingly constrained by massive 'systems'. Credit bureaus and banking which try to analyze you. Automated trading systems which fight for microsecond advantages in prediction. DARPA and NSA monitoring, prediction and attack. The phenomenal expansion of drones (1/3 of all military aircraft now). The medical industry - driven by a tangle of laws, corruption and compute power. The search engines. Network routers. EDA tools even. Just think of all the paradigms upon which compute power and programmed intelligence restrict, manipulate or enhance your lives. Consider that there are many of each, and they compete with each other. They evolve. They are pure greedy algorithms. Their efficiency and intelligence rewarded by success. There are thousands of them. There in only ONE thing you can do to save yourself: Build an ethical AI system now. Get 10,000 engineers to contribute. Get it to monitor and predict end-points of other nascent AI systems.

Well, based on your 10% point, suppose we designed something that had 50% of our full potential and used 100% of this .. that way it would still be 5X better than us :-)
But the real point is that we can already create self-learning artificial neural networks -- and even with simple ones we may understand the theory but we find it hard to work out how they are doing what they are doing...
And we use machines to build better machine sand we use computers to design better computers ...

Respected people...
No matter what you are designing you will still be using your own brain and it is a known fact that you cannot use more than 10 percent of your whole brain simultaneously.How can anything designed by your own brain can exceed the intelligence of the designer?

I am reminded of Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety". ISTR that there was a follow-on story where a survivor of the war (which the humans won because the robots fought with each other) was walking on the surface and kindly reactivated a robot, which then restarted a factory--which, I think, was then nuked (but not from orbit) by the humans--the only way to be sure, I guess.

Max the Magnificent
Hi Nic -- re your comment: "I have spent the last 20 years trying to give a robot enough intelligence to tie its own shoe laces together"...
I bet that is an interesting "conversational starter" when you are at a party and someone asks what you do (grin).
I'm really not into scaremongering (watch for my next blog, which will be on the "12-21-2012 End of the World" garbage) but...
I'm not an expert, but I remember the old AI that was based on purely digital logic and sequential software techniques -- I agree that this is not going to take over the world.
But there are all sorts of things going on with pseudo analog neural networks -- and although quantum computing is in its infancy, think where we might be in 40 years time (remember it's only about 60 years since the first transistor ... and look at us now).
If you'd asked me 20 years ago I would have said that intelligent (self aware) robots (or whatever) were the stuff of science fiction ... now I'm not ashamed to say that I think that we might be closer than we think -- maybe not in my lifetime ... but then again...

I was just talking to a company yesterday that is working on an XBOX kinect type "thing" that will be able to detect motion changes as small as 0.1mm and will be able to perform realtime object detection, 2D to 3D conversion, face recognition, gesture recognition, etc (down to the blink of an eye and detecting the difference between a frown, smile, or smirk...